A long-lived branch can add a migration whose timestamped filename sorts BEFORE
migrations already applied in prod (#234's 20260627T130000-ai-chat-runs merged
after 20260704T120000-client-metrics was live). Kysely's migrator with the
default ordered setting then rejects the applied set as "corrupted migrations"
(no longer a prefix of the sorted list), throws, and the app crash-loops on boot
— exactly incident #361 (502s for ~11 min after a develop deploy). #119 and #120
(June branches) are the next such threats.
Two levels, both:
1. CI migration-order gate (a new `migration-order` job in test.yml, PR-only):
fails the PR when an added migration sorts at/before the newest migration on
the base branch, with an actionable message to rename it to a current
timestamp before merge. This is the primary defense — makes back-dating
impossible to merge accidentally.
2. `allowUnorderedMigrations: true` on BOTH Migrators (migration.service.ts
startup auto-migrate + migrate.ts CLI): the runtime safety net — Kysely applies
a not-yet-applied older migration instead of bricking startup, so a back-dated
migration that bypasses the gate (manual push / hotfix branch) still boots.
Trade-off documented inline: apply order across instances may differ from
lexicographic, so migrations must stay independent (ours each create their own
objects); the CI gate remains the primary line.
Verified: allowUnorderedMigrations is a valid Kysely 0.28.17 Migrator option;
server tsc clean; the gate script rejects a back-dated filename and passes a
current one. No new deps, no migration, no runtime behavior change beyond the
migrator resilience.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
agent_coder
Philip Okugbe